Peter Goldsworthy has written two opera libretti, both with Richard Mills as the composer: Summer of the Seventeenth Doll (1996), and Batavia (2001). Batavia won Mills and Goldsworthy the 2002 Robert Helpmann Award for Best Opera and Best New Australian Work. The Sydney premiere was at the Sydney Opera House on 19 August 2006 was conducted by the Mills and attended by the Goldsworthy.Batavia is a story of hope, cruelty and the possibility of forgiveness, set within a powerful and communicative musical landscape, and was performed by some of Australia's greatest singers.

Batavia (2001)

The Batavia was the greatest ship of the Dutch East Indies Company. Leaving Amsterdam for the colony of Java in 1628, with 300 men, women and children aboard, it was wrecked along the Western Australian coast. After the ship's commander set off to get help, the fanatical crewman Jeronimus Cornelisz instigated a reign of terror, in which 125 people aboard were murdered. Cornelisz used strange heretical beliefs in part to control his followers, and promoted a philosophy that absolute amoralism was proof of purity.

One of the strangest and most incredible stories in the history of navigation, the Batavia incident inspired William Golding to write The Lord of the Flies. It has now inspired Mills and Goldsworthy to create a powerful and compelling opera exploring the fragility of the rule of law, the destructive power of greed and lust, the vulnerability of innocence and virtue.

Extract

Songs from the libretto for The Batavia.

1. Commander Pelsaert's Monologue

Once more I stand at Holland's rim,On the very rind of all the FruitsOf civil Life I hold most sweet,Staring discontented at the Sea.Ten years I dwelt in Eastern Lands,Ten years from golden Amsterdam,Driven less by merchant's Duty,than by private, restless Odyssey.Too soon my Holiday is passed,Home's sweet respite is done.No true Penelope awaited me,No Telemachus, faithful son,Alone, despite ship's Company,I pass again beyond the Dike,Suffering the cruellest of needsThe lust to know and find.For Knowledge is an Opium,And as the capstan-ratchet windsIn one direction only, ever up,Unsated Curiosity seeksAn ever higher ComprehensionThat permits no peace of Mind,And tosses my uprooted SoulLike seaweed in a wat'ry wind,And shrinks the sum of all I knowTo this: there is nothingIn the Seven Seas as turbulentAs the four small chambers of the heart.

2. Banquet Chorus

Bring hither bread and foaming ale,Soft ciders and spiced winesBring bakemeats and pork-pies,Bring oranges and greeny limes,Round cheeses from the north,Soft cheeses from the south,Sweetmeats and pumpernickel,Pastries that amaze the mouth,And Rhenish wine that sets afloatThe mind as if that mindIs just a boat inside a boatEssay'd upon an easeful sea.

3. Heretic's Grace

All things we eat are made of sunAnd rain and earth and sweat of Man.Thank none but tillers of the soil,The fishermen on wat'ry fields,Fishwives who gut the firmly dead,Bakers who daily knead our bread.All food upon the common dish,These meagre loaves, these gaping fishThat feed our shipborne multitudeFall from the hands of mortal Men,Being nothing less than miraclesAs great as any claimed by Him.

Lord, thou hast planted here a GardenEast of Eden, a meadowed LawnLaden with the Foods of Heaven:The eggs of birds and turtle-eggs,Plump molluscs in their crusty keeps,And meat that walks on two hind legs:

Small roes and hindsWith eyes of doves,That innocent of menHop to our knives.

In this grove of flower and fruit,Mid flocks of upright fawns that grazeUpon the Lawn compliant to pursuit,Lord raise us from our common Fall,Make us innocent ourselves,And new, and thus redeem us all.